“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”
Thus began Franz Kafka’s story The Metamorphosis. An important line not only because it instantly sucks you into the story, but because it is one of the few cases where a story began at the climax and worked its way down to resolution. What the hell does this have to do with anything? Well, that story is like so many albums that start out strong but progressively lose steam as they move towards the end. Sadly is also the case with Devil Lee Rot’s album, Metalizer. Now don’t worry about jumping up to grab your copy of said book off the shelf, you won’t need it to understand this review.
Like Kafka, DLR grabs you right away with “Pirates of Hell” and “Metalizer”, blackened Motorhead-style metal that is equally infectious and evil. From there, the album makes a sharp turn into territory that is simply less enjoyable. With stylistic nods to power metal and even a little symphonic black metal, there just isn’t enough power in DLR musically to pull it off, and tracks like “Devil’s Diary” and “Root of All Evil”, while basically good, just fall flat. Still other tracks are straight-up, traditional metal that perhaps leans towards a mid-tempo Venom – “Hell Machine”, “Metal Massacre”, and the ingeniously entitled “Black Denim and Church Burning”.
I have to give credit to DLR for taking the more accessible metal styles and giving them a sound that could attract the more underground fans who can’t stand the clean vocals usually associated with them. For me, the band will remain, much like their moniker, a novelty, as I found myself becoming disinterested in the album about halfway through and just wanting to find out how it’s going to end – much like when I read The Metamorphosis: exciting beginning, then a bit uneasy, then tepid, and finally the predictable ending.
